This invention relates generally to remotely monitoring and managing systems, and more particularly to the real-time monitoring and management of data storage and similar systems.
Data storage requirements are growing rapidly in many IT infrastructures. For many businesses and enterprises, data availability is critical, and these entities typically have mechanisms that monitor the status of their storage systems and detect and report faults and errors. During normal business hours, experienced administrators and maintenance personnel are generally present in a data center and can respond to alerts and problems rapidly. However, during non-business hours, the appropriate personnel capable of properly diagnosing and correcting problems may not be present. Moreover, some problems may have a higher level of priority, urgency or complexity necessitating more experienced maintenance personnel or may require supervisory or management decisions, and critical time can be wasted finding the right personnel to address a problem. The situation may also be rendered more complicated by division of responsibility among different departments or personnel. In some systems, storage devices may comprise different storage groups or arrays that are assigned to different administrators or supervisors or which have different priorities. Furthermore, certain types of problems that are more complex may need to be addressed by different levels of supervisors or administrators. When problems arise, it is generally essential to inform quickly the correct persons who are responsible for making decisions so that corrective action may be taken. During non-business hours or the nighttime, finding those correct persons may be difficult, resulting in greater down time or lost data.
It is desirable to provide systems and methods that address these and other problems of monitoring and managing systems, and it is to these ends that the invention is directed.